It has been requested that the distribution of Permanent Voters Cards be extended to one week prior to the general elections by the Independent National Electoral Commission.
A human rights group pleading with INEC on Monday did so under the auspices of the Centre for Transparency Advocacy.
PVCcollection was suspended by INEC on February 5 in preparation for the February 25 presidential and National Assembly elections as well as the March 11 governorship election.
Faith Nwadishi, the executive director of CTA, appealed for the extension of the PVC collecting to at least a week before the first round of elections during a news conference on the mock accreditation process.
Nwadishi added that the calculation of the total votes cast should be based on the number of PVCs gathered rather than the customary method of using the entire number of registered voters.
She said, “During the other off-season election, INEC allowed citizens to collect their PVCs at least 48 hours to the election. So there is no way we can recommend that people can collect their PVCs a day. If they were able to do 48 hours for one state, they should actually be able to do like a week before that (general election).
“There are some logistics reasons around that. INEC needs to release the total number of persons who have collected their PVCs and in checking the total number of vote cast, if you noticed in Ekiti and Osun, INEC will now give you the percentage of vote cast based on the total number of PVCs collected, no longer the number of registered voters.
“We have always had it wrong by calculating the percentage of vote cast on the total number of registered voters when we know that close to 10 per cent, 20 per cent, 30 per cent of persons may not have collected their voter’s card and the only point you can come out for election is to have your PVC. It’s 11 days to election, INEC will extend that for a week before election to enable us have the data for the forthcoming election.
“So there is no need to base the total number of voter turnout on the total number of voters on our register but better on the total number of PVCs collected. At least you are sure that these people were ready to come out for election.”
The CTA applauded the resident electoral commissioners in the states of Lagos and Edo for providing information on the total number of PVCs collected each day.
Speaking about the mock accreditation exercise, Nwadishi stated that the CTA found that many people were unaware of the exercise, which resulted in low turnout in some areas. Additionally, there was a misconception that officials intended to use the exercise to copy people’s PVC numbers so they wouldn’t be able to cast ballots on election day.
“It is also believed that the BVAS will eliminate the incidents of ballot snatching. The CTA noted that in most polling units that were observed, the accreditation process was peaceful and no chaos was recorded as most of the machines used worked very well. It took between 1-2 minutes for accreditation of voters.
“Upon the request from observers present at Area10/Post office, the BVAS was subjected to a test of double accreditation and it was found that the BVAS can recognize any form of double accreditation, as the BVAS alerted that the individual had been accredited earlier,” she added.